Israeli soldier killed in knife attack on shopping center

JERUSALEM >> An Israeli soldier was killed and a second person injured in a stabbing in an Israeli shopping center today. According to police, it was a suspected terrorist attack.

According to Israeli news portal Ynet, the suspected attacker who was killed in the attack was called Joud Rabia from Nahaf, a city where members of Israel’s Arab minority live.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the attack a “heroic operation” in a post on the Telegram site.

Video surveillance footage from inside the shopping center in Karmiel, northern Israel, showed two men in Israeli military uniforms casually walking through the mall with rifles hanging at their sides.

CCTV footage broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 showed a man in a blue T-shirt rushing up to the two men from behind, stabbing one of them in the neck area and then stabbing the second person.

As the attacker ran away, the stabbed man first aimed his automatic weapon at the fleeing man, as the images show, and then held his hand to a wound on his neck.

Israel’s Defense Ministry identified the fatality in the stabbing in a statement as Alexander Iakiminskyi, a 19-year-old Israeli military sergeant. He was pronounced dead at a hospital, paramedics said. They said the other victim was being treated for his injuries.

In retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, Israel is conducting a military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which had already been increasing before the Gaza war, has further escalated as a result of increased Israeli military attacks, settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.

In January, a Palestinian vehicle attack in central Israel killed one woman and injured twelve others.